The More I Try to Erase You
by JanettaMcGee
Summary: AU If Cassie had not been killed when she was stabbed and Malachi died...how would she deal with Azazeal and the death of her child and not completely lose herself...work in progress...T for now but will become M in later chapters
1. Chapter 1

"Malachi" She murmurs softly in her sleep, her cheeks wet with tears. She lay in bed, her sheets pushed off of her body, leaving her covered in an old white t shirt and faded black sweatpants. Her blonde hair is a tangled mess from her relentless shifting in bed as she struggled against her nightmare. The same nightmare she has had every night for the past three months.

"Malachi" she repeats, this time as a whimper. Her breath becomes more ragged as her crying intensifies, her face crumpling into a pained expression. She hadn't slept for days. She just couldn't let herself. The dream was too much. Her dreams had always been frighteningly real but this was different because it wasn't even a dream really but a recurring memory. An extremely vivid recurring memory of the last final horrifying moments before she lost her son forever. It was like God was punishing her by making her experience it over and over every single night for the rest of her life. She could smell the incense as strongly as the first time, feel the cold floor beneath her feet and the high ceilings above her head. She could feel the bristle of her wool scarf on her neck and the stinging in her eyes as she begins to sob. Every night it's the same; she hears the monotone chanting and sees the knife raised and feels Azazeal's voice overwhelming her. And Malachi's crying. She couldn't stand his crying, her little son calling out to her. She feels herself once again rush forward as the knife comes down, about to take her baby's life, and just like every terrible night, feels the blade slice into her instead of Malachi, feels the blood start to pour from her upper back as she stumbles to the ground. Everything goes dark and she wakes up, like every night before, gasping for breath, her hand unconsciously going to her left side just above her breast and below her shoulder, touching the ugly scar left over. It always hurts after, a dull burn that will last for sometimes minutes, other times for hours.

She hasn't woken up yet tonight. Her dream hasn't run its course. It seems longer as if to compensate for the previous nights she has willed herself to stay awake. In her dream she is only to the part where Malachi has just begun to cry.

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He smokes a cigarette out on the lawn outside of her window like he has done so many times before, trying to think of the first thing he'll say to her. It had taken Azazeal forever to find her. For awhile he hadn't even known she was alive. It still shook him that such apparent knowledge of Cassie's existence had managed to escape him. He had always been able to sense her living presence and from it he could always get a vague feeling of where she was. He could always find her if he had to. He even thought that sometimes, when their connection was the strongest, he could sense how she was feeling and what she was thinking. It was that naïve overestimation of his power on her that finally betrayed him in the end. He doesn't even know if he has any real power anymore. It all seems to have been sucked away from him. As if the mourning of his child had taken over all the strength he had.

Azazeal had really thought he had seen Cassie dying as he picked Malachi off of the altar and into his arms. He still remembers his hissing words to Ella and his escape with Malachi from the church. He stills scolds himself for not hesitating, seeing for himself whether or not Cassie had died. But the assumption of her death and the immediate danger presented to his son had made him emotional and single minded. Cassie probably wouldn't have expected it but he did grieve for her as he continued to look after Malachi. His devotion to his son became even more intense as he redirected his love for her unto their child. God, it killed him sometimes to look at Malachi, with Cassie's eyes and his smile. He never expected what happened next.

It had been about a week since the attempted sacrifice of Malachi when he started noticing that something was off. Malachi was growing fast, much too fast. He would age up to 6 months in a day. It was tearing his body apart. The medication for his bones was no longer working and his joints were not growing fast enough to contend with the speed that the rest of his body was developing and his heart could not keep up with him either. With each day that Malachi grew he became paler and weaker. By the time he was the physical age of 15, he could no longer walk and could only lay in bed. He had become a beautiful young man. His hair had deepened in color to match his father's, with a slight curl to it in the end and he still had Cassie's blue eyes. But he was frightfully pale and his skin had attained a slight yellow tint. Azazeal could not stand to watch this, the deterioration of his only son, the son that was supposed to lead the rest of the Nephilim through to the human world. Azazeal had never felt so helpless and useless in his entire existence. All he could do was make Malachi comfortable and hope for a miracle, ironically.

And then Ella showed up. Azazeal had thought that he had found a very secure spot to hide Malachi until the time was right and he was strong enough, but the unexpected weakening of his son had caused Azazeal to let his guard down. And now here she was again, a reminder of all that she had taken from him.

Ella strode into the dilapidated church, always a showman in her black knee high boots and overdramatic floor length black leather coat.

"It is almost disappointing how easy it was to find you. Sniff out the nearby rundown cathedrals and here you are, progeny and all." Azazeal stared her down, the anger rising into his chest. Of all the things he did not need right now, she was at the top of his list. Ella met his glare and continued to walk up to the altar and glance down at Malachi in the bed.

"He doesn't look very well." She said as she brought her hand down to Malachi's face, grazing his cheek. Azazeal grabbed her wrist fiercely. Ella made eye contact with him, jerking her wrist from his grasp.

"So he can't handle the demands of the demon inside of him. How ironic." Ella said mockingly, "After all the time and effort I have put into killing him, it is his own genetic makeup that is going to do him in"

"Don't begin to assume anything" Azazeal retorted roughly, "You know nothing of my son or what he is capable of. He will see through this"

"Maybe… if you start praying. But something tells me your prayers will go unanswered." And with that she turned away from him and walked out of the church. Azazeal hated her for trespassing in his sanctuary. But he knew that she was right.

It only took a few more days before Malachi finally passed. Azazeal held him as his breath became weak and straggled and then finally stopped coming at all. Azazeal held his son's body for hours after, crying and moaning against his son's cold cheek, calling out his name as if it could summon him back into his body.

When he finally regained his sanity, he covered his son with his bed sheets and decided that Malachi needed a proper burial next to his mother. It would comfort him to know that Cassie and their child would be resting side by side. But he didn't know what had become of Cassie's remains. So Azazeal made his way by to Mendenham Hall to find his Cassie.


	2. Chapter 2

It's hard for Cassie to remember the chain of events after she was wounded by Ella. All she can recall is everything around her fading into black as she hit the ground. She thought she was dying. Some days she feels like it would have been better if she had. It was two weeks later before she woke up in a hospital about five miles away from the school. She had laid on the church floor for hours before someone finally found her. Ella had fled and Thelma, being a ghost, really couldn't do anything but pray. Cassie managed to evade death but because of the hours of neglect in the church and the deepness of the wound, she developed an infection which led to a fever. Her doctors treated the wound and kept her stable. They just had to wait for Cassie's fever to break and for her to come out of her fog. 

It was the first occurrence of the nightmare that finally woke her up in a cold sweat. Her shoulder hurt and was sore and covered with a cloth bandage. Like always, Thelma was watching and waiting on a chair next to her bed. Thelma cried when Cassie opened her eyes. Her first words were asking where Malachi was. Thelma told Cassie of Ella's flight from Mendenham and how Malachi was with Azazeal and he was safe as far as Thelma knew.

"And you know for sure that he's ok?" Cassie asked Thelma for about the dozenth time.

"Yes…well," She stammered. "I can't confirm anything, but like I told you; he's with Azazeal and most likely very well protected wherever they are."

"And you have no idea where Azazeal is?" Cassie inquired firmly.

"Well I didn't exactly go and look for him because I couldn't leave you in the state you were in, feverish and gibbering constantly." Thelma remarked putting her hand next to Cassie's.

"I was talking?" Cassie asked sitting up in her bed, interested. "What was I saying?"

"Just Malachi's name over and over. Sometimes Azazeal's."

"The whole time I was sick I just had the same dream over and over again about the church and Malachi and Ella. It's haunting me." Cassie slid down in her hospital bed and pulled her covers up to her chin.

"I'm so sorry Cassie. I wish I could do something" Thelma remarked. "So I guess that Ella's plan for Malachi is a no go now that she's is gone." Thelma said tentatively.

"He's my child, Thelma. I know it hard for you to understand but I can't harm him and obviously I won't let anything happen to him. Neither will Azazeal. He's safe with him for now."

"And the Nephilim?" Cassie asked.

"I haven't seen any since the…incident." Thelma answered softly.

"I'm sorry that I screwed up everything" Cassie started to say as she began to cry softly.

"It's ok." Thelma told her softly trying to comfort her. "It was unfair of me and Ella to ask you to take part in kill-…well, getting rid of Malachi. He's still your son and it is perfectly normal that you would feel for him, even love him, even with everything about it being so fucked up."

"I don't know what to do about anything anymore" Cassie responded as she continued to cry.

She cried for the better part of the rest of the day. The police had come and gone. She told them that she had heard a noise in the church, looked inside to investigate and was attacked from behind. She told them she didn't see who did it and that they had taken the small amount of money she had on her.

Cassie was let out of the hospital two days later. She tried to attend class as normal. Troy was noticeably absent from school. Cassie heard whisperings that he had been transferred to some sort of high end military academy. Cassie couldn't help but feel guilty that his assumption of being the father to her baby and her attempted abortion might have driven him to leave.

She still wasn't sleeping through the night, her nightmare chasing her all the time. She wouldn't sleep for days at a time, staying awake by drinking coffee or taking caffeine pills. She worried about falling asleep constantly. Stress and the overabundance of caffeine in her system made Cassie temperamental and withdrawn. She no longer tried to talk to Leon or Roxanne. Many days she wouldn't even talk to Thelma. She began to frequently miss class and when she did make an appearance she would be late and most likely fall asleep for the most of the lesson. She was caught crying a few times in the girls bathroom. It was finally suggested by Mr. Tyrell that Cassie visit a psychologist.

There was little the psychologist could do for Cassie. There was only so much Cassie could tell her. She didn't dare tell her the truth, that she was seduced and impregnated by a fallen angel who then botched her abortion and ran off with her baby. It was just too ridiculous for anyone to believe. And Cassie didn't want to end up like her mother, alone and deteriorating in an institution. So not much came from the meetings with Dr. Green but Cassie attended them every week as was ordered by Mr. Tyrell. They didn't really help but things stopped getting worse; that is until Cassie received some unfortunate news that pushed her over the edge.


End file.
